Nicole Abadie

I liked it very much.

But in fact, I actually preferred her earlier one, Conversations with Friends.

And maybe it was because that took me completely by surprise when I read it.

I hadn't heard of her.

And I read it and was blown away by the repartee and the banter and the quickness and the cleverness.

So perhaps because when I came to Normal People, I already had high expectations.

But I thought it was terrific as well.

A book that I'll be buying for a lot of people this Christmas is Shell by Christina Olsen.

I loved it from the first moment that I read it.

It's a book about the building of the Harbour Bridge.

It's set in 1965.

There's a political context in the background.

The Vietnam War is raging.

Conscription's just been introduced.

And on one level, we have a love story between a journalist called Pearl and a man called Axel who is a glassmaker who's here to work.

on part of the building of the Opera House.

And the shell in question is the Opera House itself.

And this book is really like a love letter to the Opera House and almost to artistic endeavour generally.

I think, and one particular clash that ironically then played out in real life is the clash between politics and art, between Jutzen and his political masters.

That's something that Christina writes about quite a lot.